This is today's offering (day 153) for @mydivathings' #365daysofwriting challenge (click here to see her current post)
Today's picture prompt (below) is a Photo by Oskars Sylwan on Unsplash
This can be read alone or, if you missed them, you can read the first three parts:
Part one: @felt.buzz/outwitted-a-little-bit-of-fiction-for-365daysofwriting-challenge
Part two: @felt.buzz/outwitted-part-2-a-fictional-tale-for-365daysofwriting-challenge
Part three: @felt.buzz/outwitted-part-3-some-fiction-for-365daysofwriting
I lay in the bath, my aching muscles almost forgotten, staring up at the mural, through the heavy fog of steam.
I wondered why she had had it made. Was it for my benefit? To provoke me? If so, how long had she been planning our meeting? How long had I been outmanoeuvred? Or did the depiction of our father’s funeral something she needed to see when she bathed in the hot waters? Was she cleansing her sins at the same time as her body? Or celebrating her transformation? For my sister, our father's death, as traumatic as it was, had been the birth of something new.
The serving girl entered the room, struggling with two more steaming buckets of water. I shook my head.
“Thank you,” I said. “There is more than enough to drown in already. And it is plenty hot enough: you could boil an egg in here!”
She did not raise a smile at my attempt at humour, but nodded and left the room, returning a couple of minutes later with fresh clothes, and a thick wedge of soft-looking towels. Of my precious cloak, there was no sign. I said nothing, not wanting to draw any more attention to it than I had already. She slipped out of the room quietly, and I was once again left alone with my thoughts.
The day my father returned from his diplomatic mission, I was helping Jake cut wood for the forge. I remember Jake telling me I was getting stronger.
“Another month,” he said, as I swung the axe into the wood, the loud crack as the log split, echoing around the courtyard. “And you will be almost as strong as me.” His father watching from the door to the forge, his face streaked black, laughed.
“We’ll make a man of you, yet, boy!” he said, before turning back to tend to his fire.
I smiled. We were not expecting my father to return for at least another month, and with mother ill in bed, and Grevyl only interested in the education of my sister, I was free to do as I pleased. When Father returned he would find me big and strong. A real man. I imagined the look of pride on his face, when he saw me.
Father had been gone for months. The last letter he sent told us that if all went well he would be back after the wedding that would supposedly bond our country with that of our new friends - our enemies, not so long ago - and secure peace for generations to come.
“Wouldn’t catch me getting into bed with one of those heathens!” Jake said, when I told him. “Vicious bastards. You’re father is braver - or more stupid - than he looks, spending time alone with that scum. The King can marry his niece to whoever he wants, but the people won’t forget what they did during the War!”
I was worried, then. The Kirves were a harsh people. Before the War turned in our favour, they had successfully invaded, landing in three of our ports on the same day. It was said the sea around the whole kingdom turned red with the blood of the men they butchered, that day. After killing the menfolk, and rounding up the women and children, they drove stakes into the sea bed at low tide - hundreds and hundreds of them, it was said. And then, with swords at their throats, they forced the women to tie their own children to the stakes. When a woman refused they began cutting limbs from her child, until she complied. As the tides came in, and the sea levels rose, the Kirves made our women kneel on the dock and listen to their children scream for their mother’s help, before they drowned. Then, after a day or two, the Kirves cut the children down. They set the women free, sending them on wagons with the bloated bodies of their dead children with a simple message for our King: surrender, or die.
That event had almost broken the Kingdom, leaving the people without hope, without trust in their King. Until, my father - a simple scholar - had found a solution in his books.
Hard work, kept me from worrying too much for my father’s safety, or what would happen to us, should he fail. And I would be strong, I thought. If the Kirves came here, I would not let them make my mother tie me to a stake! So, I swung the axe again and again, and again, pausing only to allow Jake to collect the wood, so he could stack carefully along the wall of the forge. As soon as he was clear, I placed another log on the block and raised my axe.
The sound of a carriage trundling up the long drive past the forge, made us both stop and stare. I recognised it immediately, of course.
I dropped my axe, with a clang onto the cobbles, and ran after the carriage, leaving Jake behind, throwing curses at my back and shouting something about damaging the blade.
Fathers trunk, which I knew would contain little in the way of clothes, but many books and manuscripts, was being carried up the steps by two of the village boys - Mrs Karn, our housekeeper, employed them to do ‘heavy work’ around the house - and the groom was already leading the horses to the stables by the time I powered up the steps of the house, and stood panting in the hallway. Father was nowhere to be seen, but Mrs Karn was standing at the top of the stairs, by the door to the corridor that lead to my parent’s chambers, with her hands on her hips, and a look of worry on her face.
“Leave ‘em be, young sir,” she said, blocking my way. “Your father needs time alone with your mother.”
Mother had been in bed for a few days now, weak with whatever illness had taken her. She did not seem to be responding to the herbs and potions that Grevyl had made for her, if anything she seemed to be weaker.
When the door opened I stood up as straight as I could - without cheating and standing on my toes - to show how big I had grown, a huge smile on my face. But when I saw my father’s face, a swirling expression of anger and worry, I stepped back.
“Where is he?” my father bellowed, as he stormed past me. “Where is Grevyl?”
...
Part five is available here: @felt.buzz/outwitted-part-5-original-fiction-for-365daysofwriting-challenge